Front Burner - Were years of Canadian paternity tests just guesswork?

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

If you're pregnant but not sure who the father of your baby is, you might turn to a DNA testing company for a prenatal paternity test for some certainty — a company like Viaguard Accu-Metrics, based in the Toronto area. But for years, Viaguard was selling tests that sometimes identified the wrong fathers — and the company's owner knew.CBC investigative reporter Jorge Barrera walks us through his team's investigation into the company, and some of the expectant parents whose lives were upended by incorrect paternity test results.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a truly wild story. It's about prenatal paternity tests that women ordered and took, thinking that they would get airtight results. Only to find out that those results weren't airtight at all. Biological fathers were ruled out.

The wrong men got positive results. My colleague, investigative reporter Jorge Barrera, is here to tell us about the Canadian company behind these tests, Viagard Acumetrix, and the trail of heartbreak and shocks these tests have left behind. Hi, Jorge. Thanks so much for coming on to FrontBurner. It's always great to have you. It's always great to be here. Thanks for having me. So this company, Viagard Acumetrics, they no longer sell these prenatal paternity tests, but when they did, where would I have found them?

Primarily online. And Viagard also used other online storefronts under different names like Paternity Depot and Prenatal Paternities Inc., which is now defunct. But if you were searching for them, you would come across websites that they ran telling you that they did prenatal paternity tests with, quote, clinical precision, and they claimed to have performed over 100,000 tests. And they would also include these webpages that Weigard ran, all this scientific information to explain to you how they did these tests and why these tests were so solid, that sometimes they even ran the results twice to make sure you got the accurate results. And that's how Coudal-Mayer found Vygarde Acumetrix. She googled, you know, prenatal paternity tests near me,

and that popped Vygarde with all these pitches that for her at that point in her life, she needed to hear, and she went for it. And tell me maybe first what was her situation when she started looking into the test? Why did she order it in the first place? Well she was 19 and she suddenly found out she was pregnant and it's you know completely upturned her world. When I first found out that I was pregnant, I honestly felt like I had, like, no right to be excited because it wasn't planned, because I'm not in a relationship, because... She wasn't planning this, and suddenly she was faced with this new reality

with an added complication. This takes a lot. My hand's shaking. For this documentary, I wanted to be honest. Here's something that is humiliating, although maybe it shouldn't be. We're poking holes in Coral's finger. I don't know the father of my child. But she really wanted to go through with this pregnancy. And so she put her head down and faced it.

And she went to, she narrowed it down to these two guys she believed could be the fathers. And so she first went to one guy that she, in her heart, she believed she knew that this was the guy. And she was sort of hoping that this would be the case. And she got his saliva sample. And then she pricked her finger and got her blood sample. Do you think that's enough blood? I feel like there's quite a bit in there. Yeah, it looks like it's four drops.

Sent it off in a mail. And then it came back from Bygard saying he wasn't the dad. And then she went to the other guy. And then she did the same thing, and it came back saying that he was. But he really didn't want much to do with her or her pregnancy, and she spent much of it alone, you know, going to hospital appointments by herself, taking taxis home by herself. She filmed a lot of this for a school project documenting sort of the loneliness she felt, you know, he wasn't there at the delivery. And after the baby's born, this supposed biological father, the Bygard said was the father,

says, I want another paternity test. So, they do a postnatal paternity test where you actually have the DNA from the child. Beigart issues this result and says he's not the dad. So, same company, same guy, two different results. Wow. So, she goes to the first guy that she had tested two and a half months after the birth to go to a different lab. It says he's a biological dad. And then it went to a separate lab just to confirm. And it says, yep, this is a biological father. It says he's a biological dad. And then it went to a separate lab just to confirm. And it says, yep, this is a biological father. So this lab, two different labs proved that the Vigard test that she actually paid $800 for, $800 that she really didn't have, that she borrowed from her father, the test was useless. It actually completely identified the wrong man

as the father. She spent all this energy during her pregnancy trying to include him. And not only that, you know, she had a physically difficult pregnancy. She needed a prescription medication to deal with intense, overwhelming nausea. She has like all this physical weight and then this emotional weight and all of it was sort of made worse by veigard telling her choose us we'll give you you know peace of mind when it comes to the paternity when in fact the complete opposite ended up being the truth like this can't be real like you're in a state of disbelief to where you just start laughing because you're like, there's no way in any world that this is happening, like, for real. The fact that a result like that would come back with that kind of error, is that common for tests like this?

According to the experts we talked to, you know, this type of non-invasive prenatal paternity test, you know, there's the invasive one, right, that you use a needle to extract. This one, if done right, is extremely accurate because it actually depends on the mother's blood and the DNA from the fetal DNA that flows in the mother's blood. So they extract that DNA from the mother's blood, the fetal DNA, and then they match it with the father's DNA. fetal DNA, and then they match it with the father's DNA. But in order to get a match, you need to have thousands of DNA data points connecting. And that's the only way you get a match. You need a lot of data to say, yep, this point matches this point, this point, and thousands of times. But in order to be able to extract enough fetal DNA for this to work, you need enough of the mother's blood. And for that, you need, experts say you need blood from a vein,

at least 10 milliliters of this blood. Now, the test that Cordell Mayer used required her to squeeze out blood from a finger prick that she squeezed into a vial, only a few drops of blood. And we actually explained this to experts and they said, no, you know, a few drops of blood is not going to get you enough maternal blood to be able to extract that fetal DNA. But I know that some other people that used Viaguard actually got in-person visits to gather samples from a vein, right? And so was there anything different with the kind of results that they get? So these were all direct-to-consumer kits. They would send these kits to customers.

And in some cases, someone who people thought was a nurse would show up at their house to actually extract the blood from the vein and put it into a vial. In other cases, they actually went with the kit to a lab for the extraction from the vein and put into a vial. In other cases, they actually went with the kit to a lab for the extraction from the vein. And in these cases as well, the tests came back wrong, identifying the wrong biological fathers.

I know you talked to a man from Atlanta named John Brennan, who also got a test from Viagard. And just tell me a little bit more about his situation. Well, he was in his early 20s and he didn't go looking for Viagard. It was the mother of his suspected child that found it. And she didn't find Viagard per se. She found one of Viagard's online storefronts. And the results came back saying that he was the dad. Yeah, it's like as soon as I saw those test results,

it was like a line in the sand immediately. Right then and there, things just changed. My priorities changed. My perspective, my outlook on things changed. Everything I did was now geared towards building a life with Brandy. He says that he bought a new house. He bought a new car. He bought a new car. You know, he changed his outlook on things. He decided that I'm going to take this challenge on. I wasn't planning this,

but that's life. And I am jumping into this with both feet. I kind of embraced the whole thing. And, you know, maybe it wasn't the exact reality that i had planned but it is what it is this is reality this is how things are going and so and the the baby's born it's a boy and he completely falls in love with this boy he has you know photo there's photos that he showed us you know where he's carrying the little the little baby baby and the little car seat and the smile on John Brennan's face. You can really, it just glows, right? With that fatherly glow. You know, when you have a child like this, it changes your identity, your sense of self, your priorities. But then things became strained with the mom and it turned, you know,

they turned into a custody battle so he could still have access to the child. He spent like $20,000 on legal fees, he says. And then after one Christmas, when the child's a little over eight months old, he gets a text message from the mom and says, you're not the dad. You did another test. You're not the biological dad. And he texts back, what? Like we did a DNA test. And then she texted back saying the test was wrong and the bottom fell out of his world. And he fell into this really dark place that some of it he's completely blanked out on and he doesn't remember. My gut is telling me, no, this is my kid. What do you mean?

I don't care what the results are. And so you're left in this mysterious, dark place mentally where there's not a handbook on how to handle raising a kid for eight months and then finding out that it's not yours. And it took him a while to piece his life back together. took him a while to to piece his life back together i mean he even you know tattooed the little boy's name travis on the inside of his his bicep and and he ended up having to change it and he got some new artwork done over it and and now it reads travesty wow it's really hard to even wrap your head around what it would be like to receive a text message like that. You're not the dad.

That sinking, like, I'm getting a sinking feeling just listening to you. It must have been so traumatic. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix.

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So this company, Viaguard, is owned by this guy named Harvey Tenenbaum. And can you tell me a bit more about him? Hi, my name is Harvey Tenenbaum. I'm the director of genetic testing at Viaguard Laboratories. Well, he's currently about 91 years old and he still shows up to work most work days as far as we know, you know, driving this black Mercedes sedan. And he still shows up to work most work days, as far as we know, driving this black Mercedes sedan. And he's there sometimes even answering phones. He's meeting with customers. We know that he opened Weigard in the early 2000s and started selling these prenatal paternity tests, we believe sometime in 2010. And he really, you know, portrays himself as in online videos as this real seasoned expert scientist.

Today, I'd like to briefly talk about one of the most important and sensitive genetic tests that we perform, and that is a paternity test done on a pregnant woman. And he says in online videos that his prenatal paternity test will guarantee you the paternity of your child. You can have confidence in the results and in the protocols and procedures we use. And he's telling you that with, you know, wearing a lab coat. But he's also into other types of businesses. He's into real estate. He owns the building block that houses Viagard. He leases out space to other storefronts as well. He owns, well, he has a multi-million estate registered in his name

north of Toronto. We also know that he, for decades, raced thoroughbreds, you know, race horses. A couple of the horses he raced, he raced, one was called Scam and the other one was called Immunity. But based on racing results, he actually, you know, won a few races, made a bit of money, had, you know, various trainers, owned, you know, several horses over the years. He's also, you know, I spoke to someone who actually got a mortgage from him way back in the 1990s. So he's dabbled in a lot of things. But, you know, in his later years, it seems that he's focused on this Viagard business that does all kinds of DNA testing.

I know one of our colleagues went undercover and posed as a customer looking to get one of these paternity tests. And she actually got a meeting with Tenenbaum. And just how did that meeting go? Yes. So CBC producer Rachel Houlihan, who I've been working on this story with for months, went to Vygarde, yeah, posing as a customer looking for the paternity test. And she got in to Harvey's office and sat across from him and started talking about, you know, how she wanted a paternity test. And then the issue of prenatal came up and Harvey Tenenbaum revealed something really surprising. He knew that the tests his lab did and sold couldn't be trusted. At least with this, it sounds like the accuracy is there because with the prenatal.

The accuracy is there. Prenatal, it was never that accurate. And it's expensive. It's a couple thousand dollars for a test. He actually told her and described an instance where he appeared to know where one of his tests had identified a a caucasian man as as the father of the baby but then at birth test the white guy and baby came out black right what the hell's going on here you know what i mean right i wonder like he also said that he he understood the stakes of what came with these wrong results he talked about

how you're going to get an abortion but what what if it's the wrong guy named? You're aborting your child, you know, the wrong person. Yeah, I can't imagine that. Well, you can imagine everything happens in life. And he also put a lot of the blame for these test results on the customers, what he called the collection, the collection process where they would, you know, gather the samples, you know, the blood sample or the saliva sample in like a movie theater or a restaurant and that created cross-contamination. And just an aside, you know, experts tell us if there's cross-contamination, you're usually, you're going to get, you're not going to get a false positive. You're not going to get a false positive you're not going to get

the wrong biological father it would just say inconclusive or something like that it would say inconclusive yeah but to get a match to get a biological father you need all those data points

to align but he put it on on the customer that it and he also admitted that he doesn't do the tests anymore because

they couldn't be trusted. I know you also talked to some of his former employees, right? And what did they tell you about the degree to which Tenenbaum was involved in these tests and their results. Well, he was, according to them, these employees who actually were not involved in any of the DNA analysis or the actual lab work, whether it happened or not, they're not connected to that. So they're not directly responsible for the results at all. They answered phones and stuff like that. And they said that Harvey Tenenbaum was on top of everything, that he micromanaged things. And they were actually coached to ask women calling, looking for these prenatal paternity tests about their menstrual

cycles, the dates of their menstrual cycles and the dates that they believed they had intercourse with men. And then they would input all this stuff into these forms and then give it to Harvey Tenenbaum. And they described how he would look through this information and say, oh, that's the guy. He would always make a comment like, oh, well, it's definitely this one. It's this one. It's this one. It's got to be this one. Now, none of these employees, you know, could say that Harvey's choice when he eyeballed this stuff,

whether that was the results that customers actually got, they didn't see that part. Can't say that that's what happened. But to them, it seemed that a lot of guesswork was involved in this. And one employee actually told us that if you know, if you did any type of DNA tests at this lab, you should probably do it again. We also heard from other employees who said that Viagard sometimes appeared to have thrown out samples before they were ever tested. Wow. I know you confronted him about much of this. And what did he have to say to you? Well, we waited for him to walk out his laboratory one

afternoon. Dr. Harvey Tenenbaum. Hey, how are you? I'm Jorge Barrera. I'm a journalist with CBC. You know, we put it to him, you know, you first of all, you say that you can't rely on these tests, that you knew these tests were flawed. And he said, the tests are accurate, but you're not testing people. You're testing one stain against another stain. I know, but I've spoken to experts who say no. You know, you do thousands of these tests. So you do so many tests. Some are going to get wrong.

But he's like half the mistakes, you know, is the collection process. You know, we pushed him on. Well, why did you stop doing these tests? When did you stop doing that? Years ago. Like how, when? Because we have evidence from 2020, 2021. That might have been the last test.

Yeah. And why did you stop them? I couldn't get the reagents at the right price. It had to do with the cost of some substance that he needed for them. And, you know, I guess the increased overhead, and that's why he stopped doing them. You know, just listening to you talk about him talking about how thousands of tests have been done, I can't help but think, like, how many of them could have been wrong?

I know it's impossible to know the real numbers, right? So from their websites, they claim they've done, you know, over 100,000 tests. Like, we spoke to, you know, dozens of people whose lives have been impacted by these tests. And, you know, they range over a number of years from about 2014 till I think the last person we

spoke to got results in December 2020. And we spoke to people from all over the world. You know, we spoke to people from Montreal, North Bay, Victoria, across the US, Montana, Texas, Victoria, across the US, Montana, Texas, California, spoke to people in Guatemala, spoke to people in the UK, spoke to people in Australia. So it seems that, you know, Vygart through its various storefronts sold these tests, you know, around the globe. And Harvey uses the name thousands, their website uses the number hundreds of thousands. We still don't know the full scope of this. We're still trying to delve deeper to actually try to get a sense of how widespread this possibly could have been.

Jorge, are there any guardrails that exist that, you know, attempt to try and stop something like this from happening? Well, there's no regulation directly over these type of DNA labs that do this kind of direct-to-consumer, you know, testing kit stuff. You know, paternity, prenatal paternity, there's no regulations directly. You don't need a license to open a DNA lab, hang an online shingle and say, hey, check this out. I can tell you who the dad is. No problem. Yeah. That might be surprising for some people to hear, I think. You don't, you might need a license to sell an apple pie, but you don't need a license to do that. Yeah. And we reached out to all the provinces about this and some of them said, well, this is a Health Canada thing. And experts say that, you know, it should be Health Canada step in to fill in some of these regulatory gaps that these companies can operate.

So we reached out to Health Canada. Health Canada said, you know, we don't regulate this stuff. Now there's issues around statutes of limitation in terms of civil cases that can be brought. You know, there's some talk about class actions, possibly. We know that on the U.S. side, Vigard settled one civil action with a woman from California who got wrong prenatal paternity results. There's currently, there's also a small claims case ongoing right now in Toronto filed by a Texas woman about this. In Canada, is it possible that this could be the criminal code of fraud over 5,000? We don't know.

You know, this is not the first time we reported on a Viagard. We reported on them in 2018. We actually showed that they were selling fraudulent Indigenous ancestry tests. Toronto police didn't do anything about it. Nobody did anything about it. Wow. Nobody did anything about it. No, they just continued on selling prenatal paternity tests.

You know, Jorge, there is so much of what you have said today that has truly shocked me. This is a really wild story, and I know that you're keeping on it. So I do hope that you will come back on and keep us posted. Thank you. Yes, and we will, because we're still digging into this. We're still investigating this. We're developing a podcast about all this, delving into the stories of several of the people whose lives have been upended by Vygarde. And we expect to have a podcast out sometime in the early fall where you'll be able to find it on wherever you listen to your podcasts. So listen for it.

Jorge Barrera, always a pleasure. Thank you. All right, that's allbc.ca slash podcasts.